With a computer, microphone, and the right platform, your voice can be heard by millions. Podcasts are a lot like radio shows, which means you can control how they are formatted. The most popular places to find podcasts are on platforms like Spotify and iTunes, but you will also need a dedicated space to host it. Your first podcasts might not have a lot of listeners, but as you build a catalog, listeners will have more examples of the type of content you produce. You can keep creating and releasing more podcasts then wait for listeners to find you, but you probably want to at least dabble in a bit in promotion as well. To make sure that your podcast is successful, pay attention to the following tips.

Entering the Brainstorming Phase

The first thing you have to do is choose what you want your podcast to be about. It’s one thing to know that you want to cover cooking topics, but potential listeners are going to want more than just general information. Will you be talking about vegan cooking and covering where to source ingredients, or will your podcast focus more on kitchen equipment and cooking techniques? What sort of podcast formats will be most appealing to your target listening category? You will need a notepad and a lot of time to brainstorm and expand upon all your ideas. Know that whatever you come up with will still need to be tested and tweaked after you go live.

Editing Your Podcast to Perfection

It is pretty unlikely to think that your podcast is going to be recorded in one shot. So, edits, voiceovers, and even recordings are going to be needed quite often. You might need to edit your podcast for clarity, for brevity, or even to bleep out profanity in case you record a segment between guests that gets heated. Then again, your podcast’s appeal might be that it is raw and gritty, in which case you would want to keep most things as is. When you are done editing, your podcast should have a flow to it, so that it helps to develop a recognizable style. This is what listeners are going to expect in future shows, too.

Selecting A General Podcast Category

It might be really clear as to what your podcast is aboutbut it has to be in the right category in order to boost visibility. Think about it like a grocery store. Shoppers only go down certain aisles looking for certain things, so if you put a can of soup in the breakfast cereal aisle, consumers are going to completely overlook it. Those same shoppers might eventually make it to the canned goods aisle eagerly looking for a new kind of soup to try, but your product isn’t going to be there. Like other things in life, podcasts can sometimes fit into a couple of different categories. Try them all out to see where the best fit lies.

Finding an Audience for Your Podcast

Once you get ready to start uploading your fully edited podcast online on a fairly regular schedule, you can start looking at what your regular audience consists of. Podcasts with content about parenting may find that their audience is equally split between men and women, with the average listener being around 40 years of age. Podcasts about fashion and trends may have listeners that are in the 22 to 35 age group, but there could be outliers and other markers for your audience. You should have indicators about who your listeners are because it is going to be easier to market and promote to them when you have that kind of information at your disposal.

Using Promotions to Popularize Your Podcast

You want more people to download and listen to your podcasts, but you really can’t figure out what to do besides uploading it to more platforms. Paying attention to more widely known podcasters is key. For your podcast to grow, it is going to have to reach more and more people. There are plenty of blogs that plug new podcasts and help with exposure for free. Specific podcast shows get talked about via online forums, so you might want to start including content that is thought-provoking and likely to give a strong reaction. Basically, you have to talk about interesting stuff on your podcast to get people talking. Cross promotions could be helpful, but you have to have a large enough fanbase for that to have an effect. Podcasters are likely to have a presence on Twitter and Instagram because listeners want to see that they are real people who do normal stuff in their free time and like to engage with their fans at times.

Creating Additional Content from Podcasts

Podcasts don’t have to be any set length, but they usually run for approximately one hour. If you were to type out every word of your podcast, how much written content do you think you would have? Providing listeners with written transcripts of your podcasts gives them the ability to be engaged in a totally different way. Check out transcription services that have experience with creating transcripts from podcasts. You will want transcripts that are produced in a format that is easy to follow, with each speaker properly tagged. Consider having timestamps included in your transcripts so that readers can skip to the sections that they want to read specifically.

Having a podcast can go from being a fun pastime to a serious money-making project if you produce clean content regularly. There are political podcasts that gain more traction around elections or after having local politicians as guests. Your podcast can be all about parenting matters, where you share tips on how to raise children in modern times. Other podcasters have more of an open format, taking calls from listeners, answering questions, playing music, and interacting on social media. Putting out a single quality podcast every couple of weeks will earn you a solid listening base that will grow as you become more confident and offer more engaging content.

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About

Welcome to Keener Living. My name is Bruce Keener. I established this blog in March 2010, a few months after retiring at the age of 57. My reason for having this blog is to share what I’ve learned over the years (and what I continue to learn). I also enjoy hearing and learning from you.